Adjuvants are important components of the majority of currently used vaccination regimens. They are likely to be integrated into future vaccine products as well. Numerous novel adjuvants are now being developed, and many of those have been demonstrated to augment immune responses to vaccines in research and clinical settings. However, adjuvant doses that are beneficial for immune response augmentation can be capable of inducing side-effects in a significant group of patients. In fact, these two capacities of adjuvants are intrinsically linked since it is the broad immune stimulation per se that provides stimuli for vaccination augmentation as well as its side-effects (toxicities). Both of these processes are known to be driven by release of inflammatory cytokines. Therefore, approaches that diminish side-effects of adjuvant administration and/or specifically augment certain immune responses, will be of great clinical value.
Therefore, what is needed are compositions and methods that effectively provide desired immune response(s) that can reduce the frequency of adverse events associated with adjuvant use in vaccines.